Gearlog: Turning a Page

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Change is coming…for Gearlog…and for me. As it turns out, it’s time for us both to move on.

Gearlog was born in August of 2005. Even five and a half years ago, the world of technology blogs was crowded–but Gearlog had a secret weapon. It had PCMag. Early on, the site bore the tagline, “from the editors of PCMag.” It was an outlet for our editors and analysts–a way to keep up with the ever-increasing pace of the Web. It became a destination place for news and rumors and quick opinions written in between the site’s lengthy reviews.

Before sitting down to write this, I went into our content management system to pin point the site’s precise birthday. I found a post written on August 9th, 2006–about 15 months before I started at PCMag–titled “Snappy New Ultralight Tablet From Toshiba.” No mission statement or “welcome to Gearlog.” The site and its editors hit the ground running, and they haven’t looked back.

And, like the Web around it, Gearlog has proven itself a constantly evolving creature, spawning newsletters and a podcast, and surviving a number of personnel changes–including its largest shift, which occurred in the summer of last year, when the site’s long-time editor Carol Mangis left Ziff (no discussion of Gearlog’s history would be complete without mentioning the tremendous amount of time Carol put into the site).

Carol’s departure and new ownership meant more changes for Gearlog, and I was asked to take the helm. And as it had in the beginning, the site hit the ground running once again. Gearlog shifted focus under my reign, taking a more newsy approach to the tech world. We brought new writers and plenty of new readers on board.

When the company’s new owners took over, they stressed acquisitions as one of the company’s primary goals, and in January, PCMag purchased Geek.com, a much beloved and widely read news blog. That acquisition, it turned out, would prove the next step in Gearlog’s evolution. Tomorrow, Gearlog will become a part of Geek.com. All of the content we’ve produced for the site over the years will live on under the Geek umbrella, and the Gearlog URL will redirect to that site.

A number of your favorite Gearlog writers will make the transition as well. In fact, if you already read Geek on a regular basis, you’ve likely noticed that a few already have.

I, on the other hand, will not be making the move. In fact, by the time this posts, I will already be at my new gig at Engadget.com.

I’ll spare you the laundry list of thank yous–which would obviously include all of the writers, PCMag editors, and people who have kept the site running on the backend. But four people certainly warrant a quick mention in this paragraph. Carol, of course, for the reasons mentioned above. Lance Ulanoff and Vicki Jacobson, PCMag’s editor-in-chief and director of online content, respectively, have been tremendously helpful for countless reasons. And Jenny Bergen, who has assisted me with Gearlog these past several months–hers is among the names that will make the transition over to Geek.

And a last bit of self-indulgence: if you’d like to keep up to date with me and my goings on, please follow me on Twitter–I’m @bheater. In the meantime, I’ll see you around the blogosphere.